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We leave Taipei and The Cosmos hotel today and start our counter-clockwise tour of the island.  I had selected 4 and 5 star hotels mainly for the breakfast options.  In Taiwan, most hotels in that range have really good breakfast buffets.  I figured that we start the day with a good meal, and then it doesn't matter as much what happens the rest of the day, and we can graze as much as we like.  Most of the hotels will have a traditional Taiwanese breakfast, vegetarian, Japanese and western foods.  Pete misses his oatmeal, but I had a blast with the congee, steamed buns, noodles and all the vegetarian fare, including sautéed vegetables.  There is always fruit and bread as well.

The bus has shrunk and now has a total of maybe 10 rows of seats total, perfect for each of us to take a row. And the word on the side of the bus is part of my father's name: Shun (following, all right, succession.) Coincidence?

It will take an hour and a half to drive south along Taiwan Route 1.  The highway is fast and built after I left Taiwan.  I do marvel at their construction, all in segments, and elevated (more on this later).  The riverbeds are dry and rocky because it is winter. Rest areas are clean and modern.  Being Taiwan, there are a combination of squat toilets and western style toilets.  The toilets are grouped with exterior ventilation and ganged wash areas at either end.  They are outside the food courts.  Food courts showcase local products, although they always have a FamilyMart or a 7Eleven. Our one stop on the way to Gongguan was fun.  Chau-Wen walked back to the bus with a fresh steamed bun.  So jealous.

When planning the tour, I made sure to include a few very personal stops.  The first one is the Lin Clan home in Gongguan, Miaoli County.  Miaoli sits in the widest plain in Taiwan, and I think of it as prime rice growing area.  (I was surprised to hear Kent describe the area as coffee and strawberry growing regions today). My parents are both descended from Hakka people who settled in the area in the mid to late 1700s.  On the Lin side, three brothers crossed the Taiwan Strait from Fujian Province in China.  One brother died in the crossing, but the other two lived and prospered. In the late 1880s, the 5th and 7th brothers of one generation decided to built a new home with one shared Ancestral Hall, courtyard, and a half-moon pond. It was an inverted U-shape with the raised Ancestor hall facing an open courtyard and the pond outside. The two brothers had their own residential wings adjacent to the main court.  My grandfather's was on the left as you faced the hall. No one on our side lives there anymore, and my 3rd uncle sold it to a distant relative who has turned the main areas into her pottery studio. The other side is still occupied and when I was there with mom, they remembered her and my father.  This time, I am sad to say, I made no contact, but was ready to spout my parental genealogy if anyone asked (I had called my Uncle Jensen in San Diego and memorized a few key names just in case.)

The ancestor hall always sits higher and contains the altar, pictures and the ancestral tablets.  The wood beams are painted and carved, as are the columns and the bases. The altar is well maintained, and the buildings forming the courtyard are also maintained, but the other side has been left to the elements.  Since 2019, even more of the building has disintegrated, giving me a backwards view of its construction.  I was born in one of the rooms in the side wing that has lost its rear wall and roof.  Sixty-two years ago, the county hospital sent my mom home after I refused to be delivered. As soon as we got back to the clan home, my mom's contractions began and there was no time to go back to the hospital.  My grandmother and a mid-wife delivered me in that room, and I spent the first forty days of life in the clan home. I also spent time here with my cousins in the summers.  We would catch fireflies and put them in jars, and they would abandon me in the river when they got tired of me.  Grandma and I would walk from the town to the clan home in the dark, along a narrow road lit by the light of the moon and stars.  Seeing it again and showing it to friends, I would not have ever imagined how amazing sharing it would be.

On the way back to the bus Kent looks up the name written on the hall which I always translated to Hall to the West of the river.  But it turns out that all Lin family ancestor halls have the same name.  This explains the look-alike hall not too far away from this one (which is actually where the bus is parked).  Hmm, there are a lot of Lins.  My dad was one of ten kids, the first of six boys.

Our next stop is in Sanyi, specifically Shengxing Village, which has the highest railway station in Taiwan.  Built by the Japanese in 1905, there are no longer trains running.  The Japanese needed the station to harvest the Taiwan cedars, hinoki, that they shipped back to Japan for their temples.  The area is known for the wood carvings. We have lunch in a Hakka restaurant where an old grandma waved us in saying that the food was really good.  We sat down and Chau-Wen started to order, but we were giving him too many restrictions.  Kent eventually helped him out by adding some specific dishes to cater to our wide food needs.  Taiwan cuisine is seafood and pork centric.  Many of the foods have dried salted shrimp as a base, especially Hakka dishes.  Because of shellfish allergies, we had to have some foods without them.  Needless to say, the food was fresh and delicious. There is nothing compared to freshly sautéed greens, even in winter. In Taiwan, the variety of sautéed green leaves (and always with garlic) includes water spinach, chrysanthemum greens, and A-Choy, Taiwanese lettuce. Din Tai Fung has a Taiwanese Cabbage with Garlic that is fairly accurate of the quick sauté of vegetables over high heat to maintain its flavor and crunch.

After lunch, we head to the Leicha tea shop. Leicha is a pounded tea, it is savory and not too sweet. We go into a bamboo woven cave and are divided into groups of three.  We take turns to grind the tea, black sesame seeds, nuts, and puffed rice in a shallow ceramic bowl with a grooved bed. It is really delicious, and triggers a memory.  While I did not have leicha growing up, I prepped it for my mom for breakfast from ready-made packets, and I even took it to work.  How could I have forgotten so quickly?!

After tea, we stop by the Longteng Bridge (aka Yutengping).  This was built back in 1906 by the Japanese (and designed by American Civil Engineers, interesting story here is that one of them, Theodore Cooper, is best known as the engineer on the Quebec Bridge that collapsed in 1907). Only the piers remain after the 1935 Shinchiku-Taichu earthquake.  The bridge is also mentioned in the Taiwan Travelogue (Yang Jo-tsu's novel set in 1937 Taiwan).  Side note: the 1935 earthquake was devastating and the deadliest in Taiwan's recorded history.  The epicenter of the 7.1 quake was in Sanyi.  Only 21 kilometers away, my mom's oldest brother died in his wet nurse's arms when the walls fell on them as they tried to leave the house.  She did not tell me this until the last decade of her life.

Our last stop is the Holiday Inn Express Fengchia, in Taichung.  A city that by its name means Taiwan's middle.  The hotel is quirky, with wallpaper that is a drawn map of the city with highlights, a nice gym, plus great food and very close to the Fengchia Night Market, one of the best in Taiwan. It is also close to Kent's alma mater, Feng Chia University.  Because it is late, he places a bubble tea order from Chun Shui Tang in Taichung, the original birthplace of bubble tea.  It is delicious, but I end up setting half of it aside. He takes us through the night market and points out his favorites.  So begins a night of eating.

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